The warrant for the Cotuit Fire District’s annual meeting is a pretty ho-hum affair with just 17 articles, most of them routine. Fans of historic Freedom Hall will be glad to see they’ll have a chance to approve spending $30,000 to replace the HVAC system when the district meets in that very building May 29 at 7:30 p.m.

The tenor, if not the content, of the meeting will be determined by what voters do at the polls May 28 between 4 and 8 p.m., again in Freedom Hall. Ken Molloy is unopposed for moderator and Don Campbell for water commissioner, but the ballot is a battle after that.

Prudential committee incumbent Amy Kates is challenged by Frances Parks, and fire commissioner Ron Mycock is opposed by James Gardner. In each race, the candidates have very different takes on how the district and fire department are being and should be run.

The election comes at what some see as the end of a cycle of lawsuits, ethics complaints and open meeting law concerns that have made the district Barnstable’s most contentious. Regardless of who is in or out of office on May 29, that may remain the case.

The Candidates

James Gardner has lived full-time in Cotuit for 30 years. His roots go back seven generations in a fishing family. A lieutenant paramedic with the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills department, where he’s worked for 28 years, he was a fire commissioner in Cotuit from 1994 to 2006. He’d been a call firefighter in the village from 1982 to 1987.

“Every fire department goes through some stage of growth,” he said. “I wanted to get on the board so it wouldn’t have to go through all the problems” of transitioning from a call to a full-time department.

Since the retirement of Chief Paul Frasier and the appointment of Chief Chris Olsen, Gardner said, “there’s just been a lot of upheaval, a lot of serious issues just going on in Cotuit that I think are rooted in poor decisions by the fire commissioners.”

Gardner objects, he said, to the way the board conducts its business, and to how station personnel are treated.

“My goal is just to have somebody that the chief can have discussions with,” the candidate said. “Personally, I think Chief Olsen is a very young and very inexperienced fire chief… I might ask him some tough questions, but I might provoke some thought and guide him in other directions… to try to prevent him from going down the road that has led to the upheaval in the department now.”

Ron Mycock, who’s been a fire commissioner for 18 years, doesn’t agree.

“We’ve been involved in a lot of litigation over the last four years, but we’re nearing the end of that,” he said. “I think employee morale is very high. The fire chief has been with us almost five years, and he’s done a wonderful job. He goes to somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the calls and actively participates. He’s an old-style, hands-on chief.”

Mycock, who was born in the villages and has “always lived there,” owns a family insurance agency and real estate business. When he was in his mid-40s, he recalled, “I had somebody tell me it was my time to give back. They were right.”

The commissioner said he’s seen the department undergo “almost, really, a rebirth. As the old guard starts to move on, it’s not the same as it was 20 years ago. It’s a real profession now.”

Mycock said the commissioners have held the line on expenses.

“The last few years, we had less than 2 percent growth in our budget,” he said. “This year would be under 2 also, but we’re asking for two additional people.”

The department has three people on half its shifts and two on the others. “With the services we can provide today as to advanced life support,” Mycock said, three are needed.

If he wins what he says will be his last term, Mycock wants to “finish up the legal issues… It’d be nice to spend our time on positive stuff.”

The challenger’s roots in the village go back to the 1800s; her great-grandmother was Isabella, as in Point Isabella. Parks went to old Santuit School and grew up to be an x-ray technician before doing her present work as a pediatric physician’s assistant.

She got into village matters in a big way when the condition of Freedom Hall, which she had frequented for activities when a child, prompted her to become chair of a subcommittee dedicated to its restoration.

“We’ve stopped the water,” she said. “The basement is now dry and mold-free, and it’s wired to code.”

With that success, Parks decided to wade into another matter. She noted that, several months into Kates’ service on the prudential committee, the other two members resigned. The tax rate couldn’t be set, she said, and that “cost the village quite an amount of money.” Kates also “filed open meeting complaints against two of the people she worked with,” Parks said, and people “have threatened to leave because of her behavior.’

Parks said Kates “has not been attending to business” and is “more obstructionist than willing to work with other members of the committee.”

The candidate has served on the Cotuit Library and historical society boards and as a trustee of Cotuit Federated Church.

If she’s elected, Parks said she’ll help pass bylaw changes requested by the district’s new treasurer, “so the office can operate more professionally,” and wants to continue working on Freedom Hall.

It wasn’t controversy but love that brought Amy Kates to Cotuit. Back in 1990, her fiancé lived in Cotuit and taught on Martha’s Vineyard; she was an insurance and financial planner in Boston. “We compromised so he could drive to the ferry every day,” she said. “I love it here.”

Within a few years, Kates was on the Cotuit-Santuit Civic Association, where she still serves. “I think I’ve always been someone who wants to give back,” she said.

When she got interested in the governing bodies of the village, she wanted to run for fire commissioner. A registered nurse who worked as a cardiac scrub nurse, she enjoyed talking with former chief Frasier about paramedic maters.

But she chose not to run against Brenda Nailor, who had been a call firefighter for 30-plus years, or Ron Mycock.

In 2010, spurred by a movement to repeal health insurance benefits for elected officials, Kates ran against long time incumbent Jim Gill (“a great guy”) and won.

A debater in high school, Kates said she doesn’t mind losing “as long as it comes to the floor and it’s debated. At this point, that’s not happening [on the prudential committee].”

Kates said “questions aren’t being answered,” not just from her but from taxpayers in general. “There are meetings with no public comment allowed,” she said, adding that she’s had trouble getting matters on the agenda.

The incumbent said the resignation in 2010 of her fellow board members had “nothing to do with her,” and that she had asked them to stay on for the good of the district’s ratepayers, without success.

If she’s returned to office, Kates hopes “to have more taxpayer involvement. Our meetings are attended by a few people – and great people – but the same people, and we need more input. I hope we’ll have open debate of any and all issues, and that we’ll follow the open meeting process.”